Word: pharaoh
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...condemned birthday celebrations as a repugnant heathen custom and kept no record of the anniversary of Christ's birth. As late as 245 A.D., the African church father and philosopher Origen wrote that it was sinful even to contemplate observing Jesus's birthday "as though he were a King Pharaoh...
Joseph, of course, is one of the stars of the Book of Genesis, so favored by his doting father Jacob that his jealous brothers plot against him and sell him into slavery in Egypt. But Joseph has more comebacks than Richard Nixon, and soon he is Pharaoh's deputy, the man who can read dreams and who keeps Egypt prospering through good years and bad. His triumph comes when his brothers, who have not shared his good fortunes, arrive begging for food. Joseph forgives them-this is the Bible, after all-and the curtain descends on a happy ending...
...Pharaoh (Tom Carder) is an Elvis Presley look-alike in a white suit and gold-and-white rhinestone-studded shoes. Joseph's brothers put on cowboy hats and overalls for a country and western song in one scene, sombreros for a Mexican mariachi number in another. Joseph, played with spirit if not much conviction by Bill Hutton, is a blond beachboy in shorts and a cutoff shirt. Nothing is sacred, yet at the same time nothing is profaned. Webber and Rice have written a show merely to amuse and entertain, and they have succeeded...
Rossini treats the story of Mosès and the Israelites in Egypt (with an improbable love interest between Mosès' niece and the Pharaoh's son) in a serious, restrained...
...lavishes some of his most beautiful music on it, including an exquisite canonic quintet in the second act, and, more noteworthy, an extended instrumental section at the end that wordlessly depicts the parting of the Red Sea and the Pharaoh's despair. The Philadelphia production has a solid cast, though Bass Jerome Hines, looking suitably Hestonian as Mosès, no longer has the weight of tone to allow him to sing the part with authority...